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The idea for this episode was born on Twitter. Someone wondered if Charles Murray would be willing to do a podcast with journalist Steve Sailer, who, like Charles, is willing to confront openly the most delicate aspects of race and class in America—and gets the same treatment from liberals everywhere: complete demonization.
I offered to host, and Charles and Steve, who have never met, agreed.
Well I asked a lot of questions, by mostly just tried to get out of the way and let Charles and Steve talk, and really work through some questions at leisure. We talked so long that this became a two-part episode (with part 2 coming next week).
We start here with some general observations about “the great awokening” of the last decade, and how the roots of the madness we saw in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in 2020 were well under way years before. What were those roots, and how did Obama figure into this story? The consequences of substituting “equity” for equality are too obvious to need mentioning, but we discuss them anyway.
The second half, next week, will examine some of the more specific aspects of education today, starting with the current attack on meritocracy, which Charles and Steve agree, paradoxically, is not without it merits!
P.S. Here’s the podcast episode with Charles from four years ago that I mention in the introduction, “How Charles Murray Became Charles Murray.”
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The equivalent Powerline Post is headlined
PODCAST: A CONSERVATION WITH CHARLES MURRAY AND STEVE SAILER, PT. 1
Conservation?
Hey man I thought you were a friend? (Actually, thx.)
Wow!
There is no one for whom the gap between the value of what he has to say and the attention paid to it is wider than Steve Sailer. Murray is in the running of course, but he’s a lot more famous so Sailer wins. In a rational world, Sailer would be writing books, speaking at colleges, working for think tanks. In our dumb world, he’s asking for support from his twitter followers. Of course, a rational world would have no need for Steve Sailer. It’s a Catch-22 I guess.
So very much enjoyed the conversation and very much looking forward to next week!!
However, there was one very serious critique of the Bell Curve and Mr. Murry did discuss thoroughly with them…that is of course Thomas Sowell. Dr Sowell’s responses may be found in several essays but also in Jason Riley’s autobiography Maverick.
Nothing to take away from the conversation but an observation…
They had a face-to-face debate/discussion, which my trusty duckduckgo fails to dig up, and our own Peter Robinson quoted from Sowell’s writing on the topic. The genetic basis of differences in IQ within whites is pretty well settled. The question is whether the very high heritability (estimates continue to creep upward, often approaching 80 percent) does not extend across races.
Sowell is of course to be taken seriously at all times, but my strong sense is that he’s got the weaker argument in this case. Better we should prepare ourselves for science to gradually and remorselessly confirm that people vary.
My rule of thumb is: All statements of the form, “Groups A and B are equal on measure X” are false.
In fact, such statements are made and reiterated precisely because they are false. The more loudly they are insisted upon, and the more severe the punishments for dissenters, the more false they are.
On the other hand, here’s a thought experiment.
Establish identical plots of soil with exactly the same fertilizer, exactly the same sunlight, exactly the same water, and plant them with different kinds of grass. Some kinds of grass will grow taller than others, and the variability of height will be 100% due to heredity.
Now, change the fertilizer and repeat the experiment. Once again, some grasses will grow taller than others and, once again, the variability will be 100% due to heredity.
But some of the grasses that came out tall in the first experiment will now be short, and some of the grasses that were short will now be tall.
Which, bringing this back to people, may explain why Thomas Sowell can see black kids failing in public schools and succeeding in charter schools — sometimes in the same building.
Yes, that’s indeed the hypothesis. It seems like a thin reed if you’re hoping to find that differences in IQ, personality, and behavior can be explained by differences in environment – let alone “systemic racism.” That’s opinion, not fact, but it’s the opinion that seems generally to be shared by those who have been honest about the genetics of IQ and behavior.
To suggest that “bad soil” explains, say, lower black average IQ requires you to believe a bunch of things that just don’t seem likely to be true: that the environmental differences between blacks and whites in the US are very large; that those differences obtain only in the “unshared environment”; that those differences are true world wide.
Isn’t the most likely situation that things are more or less what they look like?
Remember, you can get better educational results even as IQ test scores remain the same. Reading instruction is probably an example of this, in that smart kids will learn to read even if it is done badly; e.g., the look-say method. Kids who aren’t so smart need reading to be taught properly, with phonics. Which the public schools deprecate because, in spite of overwhelming scientific data, teachers find it boring.
Obviously, behavior can be influenced by the environment: genetic changes are not responsible for the high violent crime rates in the black community, which only developed about 60 years ago. Personality, less so; IQ, even less.
To a considerable extent, I think, “systemic racism” is merely an attempt to get the public schools off the hook for failing to graduate kids who can read and write.
The reference to “bad soil”, a phrase I never used, suggest we may be talking past each other.
Where is your information coming from, that high black violent crime rates only developed 60 years ago? I suspect that isn’t true, but maybe it is. Is there some data that shows that?
One hundred percent. However, when social scientists use education as a proxy for IQ, they obscure the fact that the correlations with education are heavily mediated by IQ. IQ is “you” in a way that education is not. Point being, improving education is a good thing, but it’s not a silver bullet.
You say this is obvious, but I’m not so sure it is – at least in the sense most people imagine. The rule of thumb when it comes to personality, behavior, and IQ is that genes explain about half the variation and environment the other half. But “shared” environment – home, neighborhood, school, all the things we think are nurture – have an effect something close to zero.
High black crime rates go back a lot father than 60 years. I just found a couple references from around 1900 remarking on the much higher rates. Again – if you’re hoping for environmental explanations, I predict you’re going to be disappointed. Then what?
But your point is correct: genes alone cannot explain why crime rose then fell 1960-2000. In fact, it rose and then fell among everybody, not just blacks. Since “nurture” also can’t explain it, we are left with what Charles Murray calls “the milieu.” Not very satisfying.
It’s handy for lots of stuff. My own guess is that it’s a great club for beating conservatives over the head, but your theory is at least as good.
That was my attempt to summarize your/Sowell’s argument: that blacks have worse outcomes because they are “planted” in “bad soil,” so we never get to see their true genetic potential. I don’t buy it, but I acknowledge it has not been completely disproved.
These statistics have been discussed in the conservative literature countless times. Here’s a recent example:
According to [Jason] Riley, “Black crime rates were lower in the 1940s and 1950s, when black poverty was higher” and “racial discrimination was rampant and legal.”
If it’s not racism and poverty that are blame for the high black crime rate, then what is? …
According to [Heather] Mac Donald, “A straight line can be drawn between family breakdown and youth violence.”
As economist Thomas Sowell points out, before the 1960s “most black children were raised in two-parent families.”
https://www.dailywire.com/news/7-statistics-you-need-know-about-black-black-crime-aaron-bandler